First post and looking for some help for a new player

I'm new to the forum, but I have played diablo before. My dad used to play back in 2004 and he got me into it for a few years. We used to LAN on our old computers and try and play through all the levels (or acts?). I recently took a job that is going to take me off the grid for six months with little internet and nothing to do besides work and free time, so I decided to get diablo 2 and put it on my old laptop to bring along. I plan to play quite a bit on those rainy or lazy days which ever they may be. I will be able to use the internet once in a while so I will be active on this forum trying to meet new people and get some advice. I am not totally a new player, but it has been a while since I have played so I am looking for some help. Thanks to anyone who takes their time to make a response.

So I have the expansion and I downloaded the most latest patch I think it's called 1.13d? I started a sorceress a little while ago and got her to level 37. I think I am going to go the cold route and use blizzard. I have used blizzard before and it seems really good at killing the minions. I have read some things on this site and I have a few questions.

I should get gomule so I can transfer items between the people I make? is it easy to use?
Should I get any other type of application? what about the battle.net runeword thing?
Is a blizzard sorceress good for magic finding items and beating hell?
I know the basics of the game and I have beat nightmare and some of hell in the past. I'm just looking for a fun pastime and with a community to talk to it might be great. I am a fast learner so hopefully I can get the hang of everything so I don't seem like a total idiot. Is there any other advice someone can give me for starting out? Thanks!

Either get GoMule or ATMA. Most will probably advise on GoMule though. Easy to use. You can transfer items between characters with it, but you can also create stashes where you can basically keep an infinate number of items so you don't have to create characters to keep them on.

RWM is a matter of personal preference. Personally i'd choose it any time, but there's also people that say it's not part of what Blizz gave us as single players and thus feel you shouldn't use it.

Blizzard does well in hell. You may wanna consider getting a second element as a back up or you'll be having a hard time beating anything CI. Most things can be teleported past, but if you wanna take out Baal in hell, then at some point you'll have to rely fully on merc to do killing if you don't. And that's not a good thing. Especially untwinked.
Usually for a blizz sorc the second damage source is fireball, but you could go a different way too if you like.

Other advise: Try getting to hell Mephisto if you can and then farm him. He can drop lots of things that can really upgrade both your and your merc' gear. If that's a bridge too far then Mephisto in NM is a decent replacement for a first farming spot. If you decide to go and farm him, then get a good map so you can teleport down to lvl 3 in like 3 teleports. Makes farming much, much easier and faster. I'm sure there's more good tips out there, but i should get to work now.

I agree with most of what Cyrax wrote: GoMule is great, RWM is great, Blizzard sorc is great, Hell Meph is great .

You don't need to take a second element on the sorc. It depends on what you want to do. I started over in HC 3 months ago, and my pure Blizzard Sorc is now level 94, so it sure is a good character to start with, maybe even the best. Taking a second element would make her more versatile, but since I only run Ancient Tunnels (no cold immunes there, except for the occasional boss), Pindle and Meph, it's not needed at all. If you also want to run other areas, taking a second element would probably be a good thing to do though.

While leveling, the two easiest and most important things to get are probably a spirit sword and an insight weapon for your merc. Getting the runes is easy enough, getting the base items might take a bit more time. Other than that, a rhyme shield and stealth armor are also really good. Don't stop progressing until you get to NM Meph, which you can farm for a while if you want to get some useful items. Then your next stop should be Hell Mephisto, or maybe NM Baal, not sure about him. I didn't run him a lot myself iirc.

Good luck, and feel free to ask more questions if you get further down the road. I only recently joined here myself, but I can already say it's a great community, so nobody will say you look like an idiot for asking whichever question .

Thank you so much for all the replies. I took your advice and read some more info. Gomule is really easy to use, what a great thing! I'm just going to work on leveling and getting to Hell Meph for now. I'm thinking i'll pick fireball for that second element. Thanks again for all the friendly advice. I'll see you guys around.

Progress: Almost at NM Meph. I'll run him until I find some decent enough items. I figure I can reset my skills with akara if I want to become a pure sorceress later on. Going to try and assemble that spirit sword as soon as I can find all the pieces. Have a great afternoon all!

If you have no MF on you or your mercenary running NM cows you'll tend to find a bunch of nice socketed base weapons for making runeword items.
Welcome to the forum, be sure to take a whack at one of the tournaments!

Really? Is there no more sense of tradition around here anymore? Tsk, tsk....

*kicks shins* *lifts wallet*

Welcome! Read the stickies, be nice to EU's, stop by the bar for a Mountain Dew, and don't poke the mods.
Happy hunting, may all your drops be green and gold (and orange)!

Now... Questions:
1) yes, and yes
2) depends on what you like and how you feel, but I would.
3) Yes... Arguably the single best first char in fact
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